Here’s a crazy thought: How about paying people living wages instead of grabbing a megaphone and talking about the good you’re doing for the world? Not that MS paid poorly (I worked for them back in college as an orange badge [contractor]), but a stitch in time, as they say, saves nine.
I believe Gates and Buffet are sincere. Musk, on the other hand …
I believe Gates and Buffet are sincere.
One cannot be sincere / ethical and be a billionaire simultaneously. If Gates were sincere Microsoft wouldn’t be the monopoly it is now.
I mean, according to this, the plan is to not be a billionaire. If his net life transaction ends up being bilking Western technophobes to pay for mosquito nets and clean water that’s cool.
One cannot be sincere / ethical and be a billionaire simultaneously.
Says who? You? Maybe they once were not that sincere and have since had a change of heart. BTW, the Gates Foundation has done a tremendous amount of good over the years.
His charitable foundation is a personal tax haven/PR machine.
Fuck him.
Even if that’s true, it doesn’t diminish the very real good that the foundation has accomplished, like Polio eradication or HIV/AIDS research. You can feel about Bill Gates whatever you want, but you cannot deny that his money has done very good things for humanity.
Read his Kharma. Your poor ability to read significant life functionality and dynamics apparently. You display that by failing what is a fantastic example about why computers aren’t parasites but some of them are. They are when the masses have been suckered into his crock of blatant lies ad infinitum.
So I really just gotta ask. How much exactly does their ad brag slush pot shell out for your blarring blind rep buff?
I need some dressing for this word salad.
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One cannot be sincere / ethical and be a billionaire simultaneously.
“Says who? You? Maybe they once were not that sincere and have since had a change of heart. BTW, the Gates Foundation has done a tremendous amount of good over the years.”
No. They might have done some good, but the harm of hoarding that much wealth outweighs their good contributions. Anyway, it’s not the billionaires fault per se, but our flawed systems that have allowed it to happen. If I or most other people were put in the position of Bill Gates in his heyday, we likely would succumb to our vices as well.
"“They are moving away from unfettered, no-strings-attached giving and toward increased donor control over organizations, and are blurring the lines between private investment and public benefit.” —Gilded Giving 2020, by Chuck Collins and Helen Flannery [17].
“Your “Giving Pledge” has a loophole that renders it practically worthless, namely permitting pledgees to simply name charities in their wills. I have found that most billionaires or near billionaires hate giving large sums of money away while alive and instead set up family-controlled foundations to do it for them after death. And these foundations become, more often than not, bureaucracy-ridden sluggards. These rich are delighted to toss off a few million a year in order to remain socially acceptable. But that’s it.” —Robert Wilson to Bill Gates, 2010 [18] […]" —What if I paid for all my free software? | arscyni.cc
Yeah, I’ve seen this trick before. And I have a feeling he’ll be “earning” many billions in the same time period; how much I don’t know, but I’m cynical enough that I wouldn’t be surprised if the answer was “more than he donates.”
And even then he will still have donated a huge amount of money.
I’m not defending billionaires, but between Musk and Gates you can definitely see a spectrum (pun not intended)
Yes, and? The money Gates makes from capital he owns comes from somewhere, and I firmly believe that it comes disproportionately from the poor, as that is how America tends to work. So for all he may or may not donate, that money is circulating right back to him. It’s like if a slumlord “donated” $200 to you right before rent was due. You might find it preferential to not getting a de facto $200 discount on rent that month, but he’s still a slumlord and nothing about the “donation” makes him ethical.
As for being better than Musk, I really don’t care. “Better than a Nazi” is not a defense.
Have you seen the price of Maggi these days?
Cool now it’s just going to get stolen by the rich.
Bollocks. If these rich assholes felt guilty and inclined towards altruism they’d have spent it already instead of “pledging”.
"[…] Furthermore, their supposed philanthropy isn’t just them giving money away no-questions-asked. More often than not they aim to benefit their coffers and/or virtue signal their “conscience”:
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“They are moving away from unfettered, no-strings-attached giving and toward increased donor control over organizations, and are blurring the lines between private investment and public benefit.” —Gilded Giving 2020, by Chuck Collins and Helen Flannery [17].
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“Your “Giving Pledge” has a loophole that renders it practically worthless, namely permitting pledgees to simply name charities in their wills. I have found that most billionaires or near billionaires hate giving large sums of money away while alive and instead set up family-controlled foundations to do it for them after death. And these foundations become, more often than not, bureaucracy-ridden sluggards. These rich are delighted to toss off a few million a year in order to remain socially acceptable. But that’s it.” —Robert Wilson to Bill Gates, 2010 [18] […]" —What if I paid for all my free software? | arscyni.cc
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It will close after it spends around 99% of Gates’ personal fortune, he said. The founders originally expected the foundation to wrap up in the decades after their deaths. Gates, whose fortune is currently valued at around $108 billion, expects the foundation to spend around $200 billion by 2045, with the final figure dependent on markets and inflation.
Look , I know we should analyze the Gates Foundation’s spending closely and make sure the money is going to effective places. I know it would be better if we taxed these assholes and resdistributed wealth in a more efficient way. But I want to believe that this is genuine, and Gates is having a late-life crisis change of heart and realizes that billionaires should not exist. giving away 99% of your personal fortune is pretty sincere, if he follows through.
He has been going at it for over three decades already (Gates foundation was started in 1994) and he founded and signed the Giving Pledge in 2010, so it isn’t really that late-life.
